dad's parents
what a pair of cunts. grandad was a vicious, violent bully of a man. the only memory i have of him was him beating my brother with a belt. he died when i was about 4 or 5, which was a good thing.
grandma lost both her legs to gagrene, which just made her naturally bitter and twisted personality that much worse.
they both treated my dad and his twin brother like shit, which is why dad's brother fucked off to sea at the age of 17.he hated his parents so much that he eventually settled in new zealand, about as far away from them as he could possibly get. dad was told by nan that mum was too good for him and that he shouldn't marry her, as she'd only leave him when she realised she could do better. they're still going strong after more than 40 years.
when i was 10, my mum's dad died. the outpouring of grief was immense. he was so loved, i can still recall his comforting smell to this day.
2 months later, dad's mum died. the response to this was pretty much "oh."
after a lifetime of bewildering bad treatment, being seen as outccasts and generally regarded by their siblings as scum, dad and his brother found out the truth a few years ago: they weren't their parents. the people who had raised them were actually their grandpaents. the woman they'd always believed to be their older sister was, in fact, their mum. when she became pregnant as an unmarried teenager, grandma told her she would never be allowed to keep her babies. instead, grandma took them as her own and made everyone swear to never tell. even after she'd died, nobody spoke.
eventually, my aunt-nan developed senile dementia. during one of her more lucid days, she told her daughter the whole story. she, of course, told dad. there was nothing he could do about it, the woman he'd thought was his mother was long dead, the woman who actually was his mother was at death's door and, in fact, died just a few months later.
dad never talks about his family, he never really did. i can't say i blame him.
cunts, the lot of them.
( Smash Monkey lowering the tone of the whole internet, Sat 4 Jun 2011, 12:14, 5 replies)

apparently my grandad was captured in WW2 by the Italians in North Africa...
However he didn't like to talk about it.Instead the most memorable story he ever told us was the time he went to the doctor to have his prostate checked.That was the extent of his rivetting dinner conversation.Only met him twice in my life despite the fact he only lived 50km away.The last time I met him he asked how school was going.I was 25.He also refused to watch TV because there were too many rainbows on it.Rainbows was his code word for blacks.He was a colonialist and didn't take the end of apartheid too well.
(The Archduke of South London I'm in your Girlfriend eating her organs, Sat 4 Jun 2011, 11:57, 1 reply)

My grandad was Polish, and was in the Polish army circa 1939. When the Germans invaded from the west, Stalin invaded from the east, under the pretence that the Russians were entering the country to fight the Germans. Of course, Stalin and Hitler had already divided up the country between them.

My grandad, as with almost all the entire Polish officer corps, was sent to the Gulag, in Siberia. He was luckier than the thousands of Polish officers who were brutally massacred at Katyn.

He survived the Gulag and its horrors, and was eventually released by the Russians, making his way to join the free Polish forces fighting with the Allies.

He fought at Monte Cassino in italy, which is well-known for the intensity of the battle.

He died when I was quite young, and I really regret the fact that I never got the chance to ask him about his experiences in the war - but such is life.
(anvil, Sat 4 Jun 2011, 9:53, 4 replies)

Devil's spawn
was the nickname I was given by my ex-father's parents when I was a wee baby. Fundamentalist something's dressed in evil grandparents clothes - either riotous plastic wool or plain nylon drab for her, poor man's beige golf for him - and for extra laughs mum was Satan's slut.

Born out of wedlock sure was a riot in the 70's.
(boozehound is drinking your bar dry, Sat 4 Jun 2011, 9:17, 5 replies)

Grandparents
My grandad was a Miner, I know its Fishy but he came from Whales
(greenhat, Sat 4 Jun 2011, 7:43, 1 reply)

When I was a young fella we were learning about stories and their morals and all that guff. We each had to present a story with a moral. So I told the class about my grandpa. He was in the trenches WW1 and his major ordered him to sneak forward at night and observe the enemy. Grandpa did this and hid in a foxhole.

He was there all night and it was cold so he drank some whisky, and then some more, and soon enough he was pissed as a chook. Unfortunately though, just when he was at peak merriment, some dirty hun came sneaking up. So he fixed his bayonet and aimed his rifle at the oncoming soldiers and fired at the first one, then the second, and so on until his 10 shot magazine was empty. Then he leapt out of his foxhole and charged the remaining soldiers, stabbing and slashing them mercilessly. His bayonet came loose though so he had to use his rifle butt to smash the heads of the remaining germans. When they were dead he returned to his trench and was hailed a hero.

'Thats a great story Uzzard' said the teacher 'but what is the moral?'

'Dont fuck with grandpa when he's on the piss' I said.
( enoughblueskyforsailorstrousers, Sat 4 Jun 2011, 6:23, 4 replies)

Just prior to leaving the UK after visiting my grandparents with my mum.
Can't remember if it was Gatwick or Heathrow (It was the late 70's, I was about 9). My grandad thought he would show his largesse by treating as our final meal in the UK, all of us to some of those new-fangled fast-food burgers (Whimpys from memory). Yay!
We all order, receive our food in packaging, on trays & then sit down to eat. My gran being the stiff upper-lipped Scots that she was (she was president of The Town's Women Guild for years type) bemoans the lack of cutlery & crockery. And then proceeds to go up to the counter to ask for a plate and knife and fork!
Cue 3 faceplams (including grandad) and the spotty, teen-aged staff at first looking dumbstruck & then trying not to laugh in her face as they desperately looked for said utensils. Suffice to say there were no eating utensils on hand so gran had to eat her burger & chips with her hands which she deemed to be most uncivilized.
The last time I saw her (late '96) after her & I had several drams of her best malt she decided to cook hamburgers with the lot and chips - which she served to us @ the table, on plates with cutlery. Onya Jenny ;)
EDITed for some clarity.
(Misery McUglywife an attention seeking sociopathic fuckstain., Sat 4 Jun 2011, 5:31, Reply)

Mum's parents were ace. Dad's parents were horrid.
As a wee nipper I didn't get to see my maternal grandparents very often. Mum was a Dirty Foreigner, you see, and her parents lived in Dirty Foreignland. I only got to see them very occasionally, whenever they'd come to visit us, maybe once a year. My grandmother was a dab hand in the kitchen (reckon that's where my mum got it from) and would bake the house full of goodies at the drop of a hat. My grandfather was a dab hand in the workshop. One of my favourite presents was a wooden sliding block puzzle which he'd made himself. He was a cantankerous old bugger, prone to complaining about anything which took his fancy, but he made up for it with handmade presents.

Dad's parents, on the other hand, were fine, upstanding, decent British people, and thoroughly miserable gits with it. Spending far too many Sunday afternoons at their house was a veritable exercise in torture. I reckon I could cakewalk Guantanamo Bay after that experience. They never had anything nice to say about us (I have two siblings), frequently chastised us for any infraction real or imagined and, despite a long career in the catering business, my grandmother's cooking left a lot to be desired. There's a stereotype of we Brits, held by plenty of Dirty Foreigners, that British cuisine begins and ends with boiling things to death. My grandmother epitomised the stereotype. The only saving grace was her sherry trifle which, as the years passed, contained an ever-increasing ratio of sherry to trifle.

They're dead now, all four grandparents. All I've got are some vague childhood memories of pleasant but infrequent sightings, and unpleasant and all-too-frequent sightings. I don't actually know very much about any of them. They were all old enough to have served during World War 2, and I know my maternal grandfather was stationed in Europe for a while as part of the Colonial effort to see off the wicked Hun. I also know that my paternal grandfather spent most of his adult life as a barber. And that's pretty much it.

I'd like to know more about them, but I can't, not really. When they were alive I was too young to appreciate what they could offer apart from doughnuts, wooden toys, and vitriol. Mum's joined her parents on the Other Side (I'm not a believer, but she was), and Dad never really got on with, or talks about, his parents. I never really had a chance to ask them about their lives, their hopes and ambitions, and the things they'd seen.

If I could travel in time, I think my first port of call would be my own childhood, but as an adult, so I could talk to my grandparents and make an attempt to appreciate what they'd been through.

My grandparents (on both sides) had my parents at a late age, and my parents had us at a similarly late age, which is why I was still fairly young when they cashed in their chips. All I can offer is, for anyone still reading and not thoroughly bored to tears yet, if your grandparents are still alive, make the effort to get to know them. I wish I had.
( flake has nothing against your right leg, Sat 4 Jun 2011, 1:55, 2 replies)

My Grandads
I'm named after both my mum and dad's dads (first and middle names, respectively), and they both passed away in my teens. The details of all these stories are a little fuzzy, I heard most of them second-hand, several years ago, and generally in a situation where I was more interested in amusing anecdotes than factual accuracy.

My dad's dad served, in Burma I believe, and had dozens of classic war stories, most of which he probably never even told. The 2 I remember best are:

- Finding a boa constrictor in the toilet. As he put it, "luckily my trousers were down anyway". Some of his fellows insisted on eating it, on the basis they'd never get another chance to see what it tasted like.
- A damaged bomber coming in to land, the ground crew seeing that the undercarriage was damaged, the landing gear wasn't fully extended, and there was a highly explosive payload dangling loose. They scattered, much to the confusion of the pilot, and it was my grandpa who pulled the short straw and had to run back and help the pilot out of the plane.

My mum's dad was a country man all his life. Bought a nice big house, brought his kids up right, stayed active for a ridiculously long time. The day he had his stroke he'd been up a ladder painting the second storey windows (at 89 iirc). My mum has plenty of tales of 'life on the farm'; carrying a sheep under each arm into the barn on a stormy night and then hunting down a missing lamb for hours.

My personal favourite is the story of his honeymoon. Him and my Nanna decided to go to London for a week (from Fife, back when such a thing was a Big Deal). Because he was quite a stingey get, and more than a little in love with his MG, he drove. When my mum first told me this, I thought the idea of driving to London for your honeymoon was funny enough, but I guess that's just how things have changed. Anyway, they had to fill up at a petrol station somewhere around Nottingham, and my Grandad was absolutely mortified to discover his cheque book was completely empty. He apologised profusely, explaining that he could probably arrange a new cheque book in London, but that he wouldn't be anywhere near Nottingham for a week. The cashier took pity on him, seeing that he was clearly distraught at this breach of etiquette, and seemed like an honest guy, so said he would accept payment in a week. My Grandad refused to just walk away though, and insisted on giving the cashier his (and my Nanna's) wedding rings as collateral (she was understandably miffed). He came back on the return journey with a full chequebook and some whisky for the cashier's generosity.

Length; Nearly 180 years between them.

Edit - I just remembered my Granny's magic ring (minds out the gutter please).

None of my family's superstitious - we're all fairly rational, down-to-earth scientists, and we'll happily dismiss all forms of quackery and mystic garbage as utter nonsense. But we do have a sacred family heirloom; a magic ring that controls the traffic. I don't know how we first discovered it works, but it does. You know when you're driving along a narrow road and that tractor/camper-van/solar windmill pulls out in front of you? And you're stuck cursing at them for hours and hours on a journey that should have taken 20 minutes? Well with this ring, you only have to curse once, and they'll turn off your route as soon as possible.
Usually this is at the next junction, although on more than one occasion the ring's power has caused vehicles to veer straight into a field for no apparent reason. We're not sure if it works by psychic suggestion - convincing the driver they want to take the scenic route and stop bothering other motorists - or by actually taking control of the car - wrenching the wheel from the grasp of some poor sod who just wanted a leisurely drive.
When my Granny kicked the bucket the ring was passed to my mum. She's wary of overusing or depleting its power, but we wouldn't dream of going on a long drive without it.
(Blaah Blaah, Sat 4 Jun 2011, 1:49, Reply)

Grandad
Remember the scene in Top Gun where Maverick decides to buzz the control tower ?

40 years before It was filmed Grandad was a rear gunner on a Lancaster Bomber, even back then there was a tradition of buzzing a tower, and being in the RAF there was a little one-upmanship between aircraft.

They won hands down when the pilot decided to buzz the Eiffel Tower when on a sortie over France.

The bomber came within a couple of feet of the top and Grandad involuntary lifted himself off his seat as he saw the tower pass very close underneath.
( Terry Oblong There's nobody here but us chickens on, Sat 4 Jun 2011, 0:41, 2 replies)

Peeky Chearoast
My grandad was one of the unfortunates who took place in the Dunkirk landings. I am sure you have all heard about how the UK sent just about every boat with an engine to pick our boys up. Well, my grandad was in the midst of clambering on to a fishing boat, climbing the ladder, when he felt a blinding pain, and realised he had been shot 4 times...

...with one bullet.

A bullet entered his right buttock at an angle that it exited near the bunghole, re-entered his left buttock and exited the other side.

Luckily, he never proudly showed his scars.
(bobman500 enjoys a grope as much as the next fella, Sat 4 Jun 2011, 0:40, Reply)

Not to be fucked with
My Grandpa (long since passed on) on my mum's side was apparently as hard as nails; as i've had it recounted to me he was in WWII and the Korean War, and apparently was awarded a medal of some import for saving several crew members when their vessel was torpedoed and they found themselves in the sea on a makeshift raft. Not a man with an open diary for bullshit it would seem.

His tales of reigning in sibling idiocy are manifold, and even mentioning his name puts older members of my family into either hysterical laughter or hushed conversation as to his disciplinarian / hard line approach to raising a family.

I like to think it would be nice to meet him for a pint and a nip and just talk shite - unfortunately that's never going to happen.

Still overawed by the stories and photos, and disturbed by the family likeness (Jug ears, frown)
(mymilkshakebringsallthemongstotheyard poison hearts, poison minds - joining hate, Fri 3 Jun 2011, 23:56, Reply)

misogynism
My grandfather used to love to point out how we'd made "washing for Christine" (our mum) and how "Christine will clear it up" when we made a mess.

It turned out later that Granddad was pretty good for chat up tips for women. My favourite was "Always keep a bottle of peach schnapps in the luggage locker (car boot) and a glass. You can't drink as you've got to drive her home, but she'll lap it up".

Questionable, but it works.
(mbridgens, Fri 3 Jun 2011, 23:08, Reply)

I killed my grandparents
/hilarious joke
(TheManWithThePlan cussed your mum on, Fri 3 Jun 2011, 23:06, 1 reply)

My grandad died in a concentration camp
He tripped and fell out his Machine gun tower
/old jokes

my dad's dad fought in the somme in the first world war. he carried ammunition to the front trenches. one time him and his best mate were carrying ammunition on a stretcher, one at either end. A german shell fired in low didn't explode. Instead, it took his friends head off right in front of him. 30 years after the war he would wake up the house with screams from nightmares about his experiences
fun times
( cumquat may will not be commenting further on the allegations, Fri 3 Jun 2011, 21:49, 1 reply)

Christmas Trees
My Grandad was always known as a bit of a troublemaker, and last Christmas my Mum was busy telling me how, when she was young, he used to pinch Christmas trees from the woods nearby rather than buy a scabby old overpriced one from the garden centre. By all accounts this was quite the family event, with Grandad taking the children out during the day to choose the perfect tree before sneaking back in the dead of night to chop it down and haul it home. Near the end of this tale, my Dad chipped in to tell me he was sure that at one point Grandad was cutting trees to order, with Grandma taking them on the bus to sell at work the next morning.

I thought my Father might have been stretching the truth slightly with the bus bit, but that didn't stop me teasing Grandma about the whole story a few days later over a cup of tea. Completely affronted by this apparent slur on her character, she simply glared back at me and snorted,

"I did nothing of the sort! I had a car by then, thank you very much!"
(Thirzah, Fri 3 Jun 2011, 21:44, Reply)

My nan is 102 years old
When she was in her late 80s or perhaps early 90s, we emigrated to Australia where she was already living.
My cousin, who was 3 at the time and also living there would pronounce 'F' as 'S'. So, Frogs became Srogs etc...

Driving back from the airport after having just arrived in Oz, we drove past the front where all the colours from a multitude of countries were being displayed on poles. My cousin shouts "Nanny, nanny! Look at those slags!"

The look on her face was priceless.
(dchurch bah, Fri 3 Jun 2011, 21:25, Reply)

Phonelols
My grandparents just didn't get the answer machine on the phone. Despite being told there was a male voice with a pre-recorded message on our home phone, my senile nan left many messages to family saying "our Mo's having an affair, a strange man answered the phone when I rang!" and my mum having to go and set the record straight. There were also many minutes of my grandad refusing to believe it was a recorded message and not my dad having a laugh. Many's the time we'd come home, press play and find him bellowing "I know you're there Eric, pick up the phone! It's not funny!". They would often forget to hang up the phone at their end too, so we had recordings of them mumbling or vacuuming on the answer machine.
(Mrs Ballunatic counting calories, not votes., Fri 3 Jun 2011, 20:44, Reply)

Its so obvious
That my grandparents wrote the entire QOTW, best page last week.
(Suck it and Sea, Fri 3 Jun 2011, 19:38, 2 replies)

My Gran is currently on strike 2…
Prologue: my Granddad died when I was little and my Gran has been living alone for approx 20 years. Everybody in the family visits as often as possible so she doesn’t get too lonely.
Now it’s not her fault, but she is a bit ‘mental’. It’s genetic. She has passed it onto my mum who has passed it onto my sisters. I cant explain it, but hopefully by the time you finish reading this you will get the idea…

Strike 1:
I get a phone call at 7am on a Saturday. “Frample, I need you to come round now its important,” she doesn’t sound like she is in any pain or distress but I get dressed and head over anyway.

Upon arrival the front door is open and my Gran has something wrapped in a paper-towel. She gets in the car. “Drive” she says and directs me to a street on a local estate
Where she has absolutely no business being.

Whilst driving, I recognise the unmistakeable smell of a bacon sandwich “that for me?” I enquire, “No” replies Gran “we’re nearly there”

And then I find that a crime has been committed through the night, a ‘crime scene’ has been set up, and a local bobby has been guarding it since 4am, not allowed to move from the scene, called my Gran who got ME out of bed to deliver a bacon sandwich!

Strike 2:
Gran calls me, informing me that she needs my help in moving her T.V. stand. Fair enough, she is an old lady; i'm a young bloke, i’m more than happy to help!

Call round to find THE SAME FUCKING BOBBY sat on the sofa sipping tea! He’s more-or-less the same age/build/strength as me, and yet my Gran has decided that I must be called from my house, drive the 15 miles to her house to move the T.V. stand (actually, rotate the stand by 5 degrees, adding insult to injury)

I love her, but fuck me does she do my head in sometimes!
(Frample Tromwibbler climbs an obstacle like old people fuck, Fri 3 Jun 2011, 19:34, 2 replies)

granddad bastard
well that was what my nan used to call him, funnily enough he used to call her mrs bitch so all even on that score.he was a dirty old bastard was my grandad i recall around the time i was 5 maybe 6 that every Sunday we would go to there house and sit and they would talk for ages about things that us kids had no interest in, now gramps had emphysema and artheritus he also had a stroke and stank of piss but he always lit the fire and if he wasn't well then the fire didn't get lit, so there i was sitting in front of him watching him start the fire and swearing to himself before spitting the biggest lump of lung butter i had ever seen in to the fire except that he missed and it landed on the edge of the fire grate and sat there and sizzled in the most disgusting way and my god the smell!
i don't have many memory's about garandad bastard but what i do have are of a dirty smelly hunchbacked old mean bastard who made my mums life a misery just glad i was to young to do any thing about it and to remember the things he did even my gran wouldnt say about he had done
( fluffybunnykiller Is feasting on the clitoris of life, Fri 3 Jun 2011, 19:26, 2 replies)

The headboard.
After gran died, grandad moved into assisted living and got a small scooter to go to the shops and get around.
Mum got a phone call one day:
'Brenda, I thought you should know Alberts driving down Holderness Road with a headboard attached to his scooter'

As grandad put it - he didn't want to wait 3 days for delivery.
(nolongernuts, Fri 3 Jun 2011, 18:39, Reply)

Grandad was a strange man toward the end
he was a keen cyclist all his life, but as his legs got weaker, he couldn't really handle the hill by his house anymore. So to keep the thrill of cycling in his life, he would lie on his back and pedal his feet in mid-air with his eyes closed. Strange man. Died in the end.
( Windy Pig I'm naturally quite suspicious about the moon., Fri 3 Jun 2011, 18:16, 4 replies)

I remember my grandmothers last words...
They were along the lines of

"What you doing in my house with a hammer?"
(roadieflip Who nicked the jokes from my lolly sticks?, Fri 3 Jun 2011, 17:57, 1 reply)

My dad has never got on with my mum's mother.
To be fair, she's always been a bit of a bitch to him, but I'm getting off topic here. My dad used to call her a witch, and told me that she had a broomstick propped up next to her back door. As a wide eyed five year old, with a broken leg at the time, I was eager to see if this was really true.

However on leaving after one visit, I was disappointed to see that there was no broomstick by the back door. So as I was carried from the house, I bellowed at the top of my lungs 'GRANDMA HASN'T GOT A BROOMSTICK, DAD!' According to my mother, my dad all but threw me into the backseat of the car to shut me up.
(Aruu does not put all her trust in root vegetables., Fri 3 Jun 2011, 17:51, Reply)

Granny Jackboots...
Haven't mentioned her for years on here so without pearoasting let's see what I can recall...

Well, it's not too difficult to figure out where the nickname comes from - that's right, she was an avid Daily Mail reader and given that she was around at the time and her views since, it seems more than likely that she agreed with their famously frothing support for Mosely's Blackshirts back in the early 30s.

My mum was born in Bristol in 1939, thus she was always blamed for bringing the war. A little unfair perhaps, but then bringing war is something she's still fairly adept at now so maybe Granny Jackboots had a point. Anyways, Bristol was bombed to absolute buggery during the war however my Gran's take on this was to chuck the rest of the family into the shelter then head for the upstairs window and watch the city burn. Apparently it was "quite exciting" which is strangely faint praise for dicing with death in such a way.

She despised having children and spent her whole life convinced that kids had ruined everything. Or at least, my mum, who was the first one, had. My Auntie Steph, a few years younger, was pretty, thusly she could do no wrong. This distinction was made with much regularity to the point that when announcing their engagement, Gran uttered a phrase to my Dad that is oft repeated in our family - "I'm glad you're taking her, there's not many who would!"

Further evidence of her pathological hatred for what children had done to her was evidenced when, at the tender age of 42, well past having any more children to go with the two girls she already had, my Mum announced she was pregnant. Gran's advice? "Well you've no-one to blame but yourself. I'd get yourself a bottle of gin and a hot bath if I were you." Similar advice was repeated when my sister got pregnant years later.

My favourite story of Granny Jackboots however is her falling out with her sister, Joyce. Their dad, my Great-Grandfather, was in the armed forces, I forget which, but suffice to say he was away for long periods of time. Whenever he returned he always brought with him some presents for the children. On one such occasion he had been over to the US - VERY exotic in those days! He had brought back with him two teddy bears - one each for his daughters. To her dying day, around 80-ish years later, through all sorts of senile dementure that saw her unable to recognise anyone or anything around her, my Gran held onto one thing above all else. 80 years that bear sat in her mind, burning a little hollow of bile and hatred for itself. 80 years it festered away, clawing at the very fibre of her being and why?

Joyce got the bigger bear.
( Sonic James Doom forgetting the date since... umm..., Fri 3 Jun 2011, 17:50, Reply)

Saddam Hussein took my Granny out to dinner
She was a reporter during the Iran/Iraq war and he was trying to get her to say nice things about him. My Granny was awesome!
(teasus likes tea, Fri 3 Jun 2011, 17:50, Reply)

My Gran Nelly was a great-great-grandmother
Can you imagine that? Your grandchildren have grandchildren...
(moon monkey is busy making memories worth repressing, Fri 3 Jun 2011, 17:29, 6 replies)

My Grandad
Was a desert Rat. Had balls of steel and brains like a steel trap.

Now - Get the fuck off his lawn.
(erewhon, Fri 3 Jun 2011, 17:16, 2 replies)

My Great-Grandad Victor was the greatest liar of WWII.
Some of his spurious achievements:

*Did Winston Churchill impressions for the beeb when the great man wasn't available.

*Nearly shot Hitler, but his trigger got stuck.

*Borrowed, and posessed until the day he died, Montgomery's Trenchcoat.

*Lifesaved Tommies from the Normandy landings across the channel, two at a time, swimming on his back, one under each arm

*Whilst lifesaving Tommies, bagged a u-boat by swimming up to it and dropping a grenade down the periscope.

These stories were all told to my uncle when he was at a credulous age. Or at least my uncle said they were. But I can't be sure because Bullshitting is a fine old family tradition.
(universalpsykopath loves what you've done with your hair., Fri 3 Jun 2011, 17:10, 2 replies)